in the endless seasons of souls clamoring for flaws,
time knows what is happiness,
what is finished, who unlucky life trusts,
and where no one can turn.

that’s where the Gallic cockerel comes in

misery brings hunger on a donkey
earth and stones like air
a field of churches
where each poison stands on bindweed

my wanting is the only spell
the wasted effort of words
right here in flight
from popular ruin
to death’s best-kept disregard

prompt: from Collier Nogues‘s prompt, which asks the writer to take a piece of junk mail, remove the nouns, then replace them with nouns from another source. i used a Burlington Free Press subscription ad, and replaced the nouns with those of two poems by Arthur Rimbaud (‘O seasons, O chateaux’ and ‘Festivals of Hunger’). my original intent had been just to use ‘O seasons, O chateaux,’ but i ran out of nouns. ‘Festivals of Hunger’ was right above it and provided me with the nouns for the ‘misery’ stanza.